Dear friends, May 2021: will this be the definitive reopening? We do not know, we ardently hope so and in any case we try to equip ourselves thinking about which place or which site we can visit in the coming months. We remembered when in November 2016, on the occasion of a meeting of the Strabordo Association, we discovered Villa Adriana in Tivoli (RM). To give an idea of the beautiful structure we are talking about, let's take the following text from the website of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage https://www.levillae.com/i-luoghi/villa-adriana/: Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, it was built between 118 and 138 AD. from the emperor Hadrian, in a green area rich in water near Tivoli, the ancient Tibur. The Villa extended over an area of at least one hundred and twenty hectares, including residential structures, spas, nymphaeums, pavilions and gardens. The various buildings were connected to each other, as well as by surface paths, also by an underground vehicular and pedestrian road network, functional to the services. Extraordinary was the richness of the architectural and sculptural decoration of the villa which has been the subject of frenetic and systematic research since the Renaissance. Almost all major museums and collections in Rome and the rest of Italy, as well as in Europe, include among their works exemplary from Villa Adriana. Currently the area that can be visited is about 40 hectares. For our part we add that visiting Villa Adriana with our vehicles, both electric and manual, is a real pleasure, because you can see almost everything and the paths are easily accessible. So let's move on to the images, starting with the model located in the ticket office and which gives an idea of the breadth of the site:
We enter through the massive walls:
Let's go on like this, wandering among imposing buildings, columns, statues, fish ponds and tanks:
The pool - Canale del Canòpo, with the columns and statues of the Caryatids on the edges:
this is the statue of Mars:
The so-called Peschiera, which was probably not used for fish farming but was a body of water designed to create plays of light and reflections:
We close with the Temple of Venus:
What to say? We hope to have transmitted to you, with these few images, at least a faint idea of the vastness and majesty of Villa Adriana. There would be much more to see, which we were unable to visit at the time due to lack of time. It is therefore advisable to go there having sufficient time and a guide that integrates the interesting explanations provided by the posters scattered along the route. One last logistical information: this is the farmhouse where we had lunch and which meets our requirements: Agriturismo Colle Paciocco (*): Via Empolitana 238, Tivoli (RM) +39 0774 312312 http://www.agriturismocollepacioccotivoli.it/ (*) symbol indicating the presence of toilets equipped for the disabled